Sunday, August 12, 2012

With the Indians’ season bottoming out in the course of
about two weeks, the team has attempted to turn the page past 2012 (despite
more than 50 games remaining) with an eye towards…yes, next year. The moves that put an end to the 2012
incarnation of the Indians have already started with Lowe, Damon, and Lopez
giving way to Kluber, Zeke, and Donald…in a roundabout way at least. Going further, Hafner is on the DL…again, and
maybe this time for good, with a new pitching coach in the dugout as Radinsky’s head was put up on a stake to proclaim “there will be casualties here”. And while I’m not going to pretend to know if
Radinsky was part of the problem or part of an unreachable solution, it is
interesting to note that Ubaldo said of Radinsky, upon his firing that “he did everything
possible…It’s my fault”, showing that Jimenez is pretty acutely aware of his
role in the shocking descent of the team over the last year, the last month,
and the last few weeks.

Of course, Ubaldo assuming blame for the firing doesn’t get
Radinsky his job back or anything and we’re left here looking down the barrel
of a little more than 50 games (think about the fact that the season is only
2/3 of the way over) wondering what happens now. That is, there is no real chance of
contention this year and the Indians have already largely cleared the decks of
veterans that don’t factor in next year, with Kotchman being the lone remaining
“not-under-contract” player for 2013 (and I imagine they’ll move him in an
August trade at some point as his glove is still compelling and he has a
not-all-that-embarrassing .723 OPS since July 1) with all of the other players
on the roster still under club control…even Duncan (under club control through
2015 and still affordable and useful as a RH bench bat), who is often lumped
into the Lowe/Damon column.

But, really…what now?

Unfortunately, it becomes a time where evaluation takes
place and players try to build some momentum for next year, the way that
Santana seems to be doing, or gaining confidence in their ability to compete at
the MLB level, the way that McAllister and a couple of the young relievers are doing. While that isn’t really all that interesting,
as it feels like what we’ve been doing from August on since 2009, the Indians
are full of players that they need to either figure out as useful parts or
parts whose “use” is most valuable elsewhere, either via trade or as an open 40-man
roster spot.

Certainly, they should be taking a look at Marson every day
(or close to it) as a catcher, particularly given that the DH spot is open (probably
for the rest of the year) and 1B could be open soon, meaning that Santana could
focus on his hitting for the rest of the year while staying healthy. Perhaps they could find that their “problem”
at 1B could be solved by Marson catching with Santana at 1B in 2013 and beyond
if Marson is able to show some semblance of consistency at the plate. In addition, they should be seeing if Donald
is able to handle the Utility role (as in, can he be a viable back-up SS) so
they don’t have to subject themselves to any kind of external Brent
Lillibridge-ian player as an “addition” to the team in the off-season. Likewise, they should be giving Zeke as much
exposure as they can in both LF and CF (giving Brantley some days at DH or off)
to see if he can actually look like the “best defensive OF” that he’s been
purported to be, in essence to see if Carrera is a legitimate possibility as
the 4th OF next year.
Additionally, they should continue to try to build Cody Allen, Esmil
Rogers, and Tony Sipp (back) into viable back-end-of-the-bullpen options for
next year while continuing to see if McAllister and Kluber are about to take
any kind of Westbrook-ian leap into a permanent starting rotation spot for the
foreseeable future.

But frankly, all of that isn’t all that interesting (even to
someone like me) and that’s really just talking about the periphery of the
roster in terms of a back-up catcher, a utility IF, the middle of the bullpen,
and the back-end-of-the-rotation. Not to
say that it isn’t useful to find answers to some questions on these guys – or
even seeing if they could build up some trade value for a guy like Lou Marson
or Jason Donald as a throw-in for an off-season trade – but the performance of
those guys down the stretch isn’t likely to have a big impact on the 2013 team,
even if some of the performances down the stretch here could affect some of the
decisions (and there are lot of them) facing this team this off-season, in
terms of FA, trades, and internal pieces.

Even more important than seeing if any of those peripheral
pieces can legitimately be counted on for 2013 (affecting how/if the Indians
augment this group), the players that could have a big impact on 2013 are the
ones that we’ve been watching all year long, with few “new” answers likely to
come in the final months. How the
organization handles those players (Choo and Perez, most notably) this
off-season is going to determine whether they think of the future of this group
of currently assembled players in the short-and-long term.

Because as much momentum as there seems to be for the “blow
it all up”…um, strategy, let’s remember that the Indians acquired these particular players back from 2008
to now (via trade and draft) because they were similarly-aged,
similarly-controlled, and (hopefully) talented enough that they would mature
into a contender. Though the Ubaldo deal
threw a bit of a wrench into those works, there are still pieces and parts –
particularly on offense – that align very nicely on the field and in terms of controlled years, particularly when you remember that Santana and Kipnis are
under club control through the 2017 season.
That’s why I have such difficulty seeing the “trade anything/everything
of value” and try to envision a day 3 to 4 years from now – when Brantley,
Santana, and Kipnis (just to name a few) are playing out the end of their days
with the Tribe – when the High-A and Low-A talent that would come from a
complete blow-up/rebuild now are hopefully
maturing and congealing into a contender…because didn’t we just see that attempted?

Indians: “They are in
a really tough spot. They don’t have much talent on their big-league club, and
they don’t have anything in the farm system. If I’m running that club, I’m
trading Justin Masterson, Chris Perez, and Shin-Soo Choo over
the winter and trying to collect as much young talent as I can. They need to
rebuild, and it's going to be a long process if they do.”

Oof…

So about 3 to 4 years after trading everything that wasn’t
nailed down in an attempt to collect as much young talent as they could, this
“Front Office type” is telling Perrotto that they’d trade the biggest assets
(and those closest to FA) in an attempt to “collect as much young talent as
(they) can”.

And that’s why this Front Office (assuming they’re still the
Indians’ Front Office in 3 months) faces such a difficult off-season as they
aligned Santana, Kipnis, Brantley, Masterson, Perez, and others to be “ready”
to contribute in the final years that Choo and Ubaldo are under contract, with
Cabrera under control for another two years.
Though they’re unquestionably handcuffed by a lack of payroll that would
allow them to compete for the Hamiltons and Grienkes of the world and the
prospects to make a splash in the Trade Market, they’re left with the unenviable
decision to try to make the right moves to augment the current club in place or
go for a full-bore rebuild, which would be a pretty hard sell to ownership so
quickly after the last “rebuild/reload/whatever” less than 5 years ago.

Since the more likely of the two “alternatives” is to augment
and reshape the current roster – as I don’t think the full-scale bomb is
dropping soon – and they take it about 1/3 of the way or ½ way from what that
“Front Office type” suggested, meaning that don’t move Masterson, but gauge
market interest and return for Perez and Choo, what are we looking at here, and
is any kind of assumed return for either (or both) enough to make 2013 much
more palatable or are we quite suddenly writing off 2013, once thought to be
the “target date” when Ubaldo was added?

In other words, is it possible to move Perez and/or Choo this
off-season and expect this team to still think about contention in 2013?

In terms of what could reasonably be expected for a trade
that would involve Perez and/or Choo, the assumption that the Indians can add a
ready-for-MLB starting pitcher or 1B seems to be floating out there, but is
that realistic?

If they were to move Perez – and it has been suggested that
he should be traded for some time, for reasons listed pretty accurately here –
they would be dealing from a position of strength and it would seem that they
have a ready-made replacement in Vinnie Pestano for the 9th inning. If the assumption is that
Smith/Rogers/Sipp/Allen/name a MiLB reliever can settle themselves into roles
for the 6th through 8th innings, it makes sense to attempt
to “sell” Perez (who my son has taken to call “Babyface” with his beard
gone) when his value is at its peak and before he gets (too) expensive via
arbitration.

But what could they expect to get for him?

Certainly, the ideal is what the A’s received for Andrew Bailey and Ryan Sweeney, namely OF Josh Reddick, who currently has 21 2B, 25
HR, and a .849 OPS to date in Oakland. And you can simply say…let’s turn Chris Perez
into a ready-to-be-an-All-Star corner OF like the A’s did last year with Bailey
(and Sweeney) for Reddick.

But let’s remember that, when that deal was consummated, Josh
Reddick had played in 143 games for Boston,
with 10 HR and a .706 OPS in a little more than 400 PA and he was likely slated
to start the season in AAA. Even if he
was a name that was bandied about here (and other places…and check this out from last December from Adam Van Arsdale, suggesting Reddick for C. Perez) that
came largely based on this from B-Pro, written about Reddick (again, 21 2B, 25
HR, .849 OPS to date) and Ryan Kalish (only 85 PA with the Red Sox this year,
with a .922 OPS in AAA Pawtucket) and how each had “potential” coming into the
season:

Kalish and Reddick
have come up together through the Red Sox system and have similar potential as
corner outfielders. Kalish is the more athletic of the pair, but Reddick has
more power and the stronger arm. As of right now, Reddick is the starting right
fielder in Boston, but as one scout put it, “They’re both good enough to play
every day in the big leagues… just not for the Red Sox.” Both could be involved
in potential deals that return older, more expensive upgrades.

So how do the Indians find another Josh Reddick and would
some team be willing to trade a young, under-club-control OF (as an example)
for an about-to-get-more-expensive closer in C. Perez?

That’s the question at hand as, yes…in an ideal world, the
Indians simply deal Perez, get a ready-to-step-in bat (or starter) and call it
a day, but finding that situation – when they probably did gauge interest and
return for Perez at the Trading Deadline – is what it will come down to. Certainly, they could get some package of
prospects for Perez, but what would a trade like that mean for 2013 or even
2014?

Even more confusing is the Choo situation as he (unlike
Perez) is entering his walk year and the Indians have NO compelling options
anywhere in the organization to replace him.
Don’t get me wrong here, at some point, they’re going to have to
eventually replace him as Choo is going to leave either by hook (via trade) or
crook (Messr. Boras)
at some point in the next 14 months or so.
But again, if the Indians do look to move Choo, what expectation should
there be that they could add a ready-to-contribute starting pitcher (or OF or
1B) when recent trades involving other still-under-control OF have resulted
largely in prospect packages.

Perhaps the best example of this is to look at the packages
that netted Hunter Pence in the past two years, with the Astros sending 2 ½ years
of club control of Pence to the Phillies and the Phillies recently trading 1 ½ years
of club control to the Giants. Now,
realizing that this isn’t a “this is the going rate for an OF on the Trade
Market” proclamation, it is interesting to look to see what the Astros, then
the Phillies were able to get for Hunter Pence…and Hunter Pence for longer than
what the Indians would be giving up in Choo.

When the Astros sent him to Philly, they added Jarred
Cossart as the main piece closest to MLB, who at the time was a 21-year-old
pitcher in AA who was listed as the 70th best prospect in baseball
prior to the 2011 season. Since then,
he’s ascended to AAA (just recently) and was BA’s 50th best prospect
coming into the 2012 season and could perhaps contribute to the Astros next
year…or about 2 years after Houston added him.
Past Cossart, they acquired OF Jonathan Singleton, who was in High-A
ball at the time and ranked as the 39th best prospect prior to last
season by BA, “improving” to the #34 slot prior to this year, where he is
currently a 20-year-old in AA. In
addition to those two main players, they added an older arm in Josh Zeid (now
25, with a 6.08 ERA in AA) and a very young OF in Domingo Santana (now 19 years
old and playing in High-A) as the PTBNL.
After having traded Pence about a year ago, the Astros have yet to see
any kind of MLB contributions from the players they added, even if Cossart may
not be too far away, depending upon his performance in AAA.

Now, just a year later, the Phillies sent Pence off to the
Bay Area for the Giants to retain club control over him for 1 ½ years. The Phillies’ return for those 1 ½ years of
Pence from San Francisco was an interesting 20-year-old catcher that was
recently promoted to AA in Tommy Joseph and a hard-throwing relief prospect in
Seth Rosin that figures to start 2013 in AA, though he could move quickly as a
late-inning reliever. So…two guys that –
while interesting with high ceilings – are likely to spend the 2013 season in
AA, maybe making it to AAA in 2014, with an eye towards a call-up to MLB
(assuming things go well) towards the end of 2014, or about the time that
Francisco Lindor should (knocking firmly on wood) be getting close to MLB.

And the reason that I put all of the ETA’s in there for
those players is not coincidental as both packages revolved around players
either in AA or High-A ball, meaning players that weren’t going to arrive to
MLB in any kind of short order. Perhaps
the Astros, then Phillies, desired lower-level players and demanded that those
particular players be included in the deals, but one would assume (particularly
with the Phillies) that most clubs would prefer to get closer-to-MLB players,
assuming that their pedigree was in line with those below them in the Minors.

Maybe they can target closer-to-MLB players or insist upon
already-established MLB players under club control for the foreseeable future,
but there are you returns for 2 ½ years of Hunter Pence and 1 ½ years for
Pence. Certainly, I realize that Choo is
a better player than Pence, but he’s also a Boras client who is unquestionably going to
test the FA waters at the end of 2013 and the likelihood that he signs with any
team that would acquire him in the off-season is as laughable as the idea that
he’s suddenly going to ink a deal with the Tribe.

All of that context brings us back to the idea that the
Indians can simply make a deal to bolster their MLB rotation immediately by
moving Choo or would be able to find his replacement in RF by essentially
trading for him. If the Pence deals
provide any insight, the Indians might be looking at a package that would
include players further away from MLB and, lacking an obvious replacement for
Choo, how they handle the Choo situation is going to be the move/non-move that
tips their hand about expectations for 2013, most notably.

The assumption that the Indians can simply trade Choo (or
Perez) for guys that step in right away is a tough one to envision on a
tit-for-tat scale, particularly given the limited control that any acquiring
team would be getting with Choo (or Perez) in a move. Yes, there have been moves that have involved
MLB players being dealt for MLB players, but those deals (Garza-for-Young,
Hamilton-for-Volquez) often involve young players under control for a longer
period of time than the one year remaining on Choo’s deal. And yes, there have been deals like the one
involving Josh Reddick last year heading West to Oakland, but the Indians would have to hit on
one of those deals – and hit a HR doing so – to make 2013 not feel like a step
back or just another plea to “wait until these guys are ready”.

Because that “wait until these guys are ready” day has
already arrived for the current group of Indians and how the organization
envisions them in 2013 – as a contender in need of a few tweaks/additions or as
a non-contender – is going to become clear in what is shaping up as a
franchise-altering and ownership-defining off-season for the team.

Posted by
Paul Cousineau

4 comments:

The highly disciplined, even rigid, management philosophy the Indians use is getting in our way. Devotion to the front office and management process has meant bad performers are tolerated for far too long. Draft after abysmal draft destroyed our dream of internal development naturally refueling the big league club year after year, and yet no one lost their job. Devotion to Eric Wedge dictated bad trades and bad team management despite mediocre results. Again, no front office denizens were fired.

There were strategic errors too. One big management error was the idea of an incremental rebuild after the 2009 debacle when, instead of completey rebuilding the team, the front office sought a partial rebuild by trading for "close to the majors" players. Poor selection of players coming back has undone that idea, and made the partial rebuild a failure.

Ownership has made a valiant effort to run the team in keeping with the internally generated cash flow of the team, and obviously over the long haul this is the only way to keep the Indians viable. But now we are left with no option: the Dolans need to find some cash, and invest that cash in hitters this winter. Last winter they did invest money, but the front office bought very badly. Penny wise, they ignored Willingham and bought Damon; a bad decision. They signed Kotchman instead of a bolder more expensive option. Another bad choice. They risked $5 million on Lowe instead of that amount or more on a more effective free agent choice who might have deserved a multi-year deal. Combined with the bad Hafner decision, the Tribe invested about 40% of the 2012 payroll budget in bad players.

Any chance that Cabrera could net us a more satisfactory return due to more club control his contract provides? Can Donald be a placeholder at SS while saving Choo, who will be doing his best to impress in his FA year, for a mid-season trade in 2013.

David,Certainly, Cabrera would be attractive as trade bait with his new contract in hand, but the acquisition of Lillibridge with Donald in the system doesn't bode well for the future of Jason Donald. I'm intrigued by Juan Diaz (now in AAA), but they'd have to be awfully sure about what they're getting for Asdrubal because (like Choo and any replacement for him) of the organizational drop-off behind Asdrubal.

I'm not sure about trading Cabrera and Choo in the offseason. I do, however think we missed the boat on trading Chris Perez before the deadline. If the Giants were really going to give us Belt (who's already heating up recently) we should have been all over that. Bullpen is the only position of strength on this team and trading Perez made perfect sense in that Pestano can step right into the closer role. With Smith sliding to 8th inning guy and maybe Sipp/Rogers/Allen for middle relief. Also, Perez's value was never higher than mid-July, coming off his All-Star appearance and leading the league in saves.

As far as trading Choo and Cabby, these are trades that would severely hurt the team in the short run. This offense is marginal even with these two. I can't imagine what it would look like with one or both of these guys gone.